


UNC: Baldr's Tears

by FireEye



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mass Effect: Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 23:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One mysterious ship of unknown origin.  One ship capable of flying undetected.  Three Alliance Marines.  Trouble.  Mass Effect: Big Bang, 2012: Fic by FireEye; Art by MaxwellDemon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	UNC: Baldr's Tears

**Author's Note:**

>   
> 

**UCN: Baldr's Tears**

 

The cards flitted between them in pairs, faster than words.  The conversation meandered through the late, lazy afternoon, broader than a river, never deeper than a brook, and, at times, dry as the desert, brightened by warm laughter that lit up the room.

Conversation and laughter were the gunnery chief’s treasured domain, in the off hours between stars.  Across the table, Shepard’s eyes merely crinkled at the corners.

“So there I was, raring to kick someone’s ass.  And this corporal, she’s like... twice my size.”  Securing her deck fast against her palm, Ashley spread her hands wide in emphasis.  “Built like a Grizzly.”

Shepard arched an eyebrow, collecting the two cards between them before tossing down a third.

The younger woman’s animation wilted, and she deflated, sinking back into her chair and massaging her fingers into the joint of her shoulder.  “She laid me flat.  I wasn’t even a challenge.” Ashley flipped over a card from her deck and set it down, claiming both cards, before raising a finger toward the ceiling.  “She did stick around afterward and teach me a thing or two, though.”

“Did she teach you not to-...”

Shepard’s implant chimed in time with the intercom above.  _“Commander?”_

“Here,” Shepard replied to the ceiling, dropping a four of spades over Ashley’s seven of clubs.  “What do you need?”

 _“ **I** don’t need anything.  Thank you for asking.”_  Shepard narrowed her eyes, flicking down another card that, like its predecessor, Ashley promptly claimed.  _“Admiral Hackett, however, desires your illustrious presence.”_

The words took a moment to sink in.  Pulling her feet off the edge of the table, Shepard squared the cards in her hands, setting her half of the deck down.  “Tell him I’m on my way.”

Ashley cackled with exaggerated glee.  Collecting the other half of the deck and adding it to her own, she twisted in her seat as Shepard passed by.  “Hey, I’m going to take that one as a forfeit.”

“Have to let you win sometimes,” Shepard tossed back.  The sound of cards being shuffled was abruptly silenced as the door whispered closed behind her.  Sparing a glance across the crew deck, the commander headed towards the stairs and the CIC.

Ignoring Vollan’s sleepy, surprised, and ultimately sloppy salute as she passed through the door, Shepard made straight for the command dais.  Crossing her arms against the railing, she cast her gaze over the navigation crew at work.  Tension crackled through the air, almost thick enough to see.

Rubbing her eyes, Shepard sighed deeply; she pushed up from the bar and held square.  “Admiral.”

 _“Commander.”_ The holographic galaxy revolved peacefully.  Shepard watched the Orion spur drift past.  _“We have a rather sensitive situation on our hands.  I think you may be interested.”_

The map paused, display moving backwards.  As Pressly fixed upon a singular vector, a cluster of stars expanded to fit the view.  A secondary data field materialized, displaying an arrangement of sensor scans and truncated intelligence reports.

Shepard quietly studied the display, then flicked her eyes towards the navigations path.  After a moment’s consideration, she pushed off the rail entirely.  The heel of her boot squeaked audibly against the floor, cutting through the silence.

“Moreau, patch this through to the comm. room.”

~*~

Kaidan rolled out of the sleeper pod only half awake.  The grating underfoot was cold through his socks, the lights were bright to his yet-unadjusted eyes, and the serviceman’s voice needed to be dialed down a notch.

“Sorry to wake you sir,” Yi said, and she certainly sounded contrite.  “Commander Shepard wants to see you in the comm. room.”

Waving her off with a tight smile, he blindly groped for his clothing out of the hanger on the inside of the pod.  Whatever Shepard wanted, he imagined _wanting to be seen_ involved clothes and a clear mind.

 

As Kaidan stepped onto the command deck, he blinked as Corporal Vollan pulled off one of the crispest salutes he could remember ever having seen.

Particularly coming from Corporal Vollan.

 

Pressly and Adams both were in the comm. room, sitting across from Shepard.  The commander sat balancing her chin on her hand, balanced in turn by her elbow on her knee; Adams leaned back in his chair comfortably, half focused on his omni-tool while she spoke.  Pressly, meanwhile, sat stiff upright, as though someone had starched his underwear.

The muted conversation died as Kaidan strolled down the ramp, and he dropped comfortably into the chair nearest to Shepard, who abruptly stood, and, crossing her arms, leaned against one of the projectors before the display.  Pressly and Adams followed her movement raptly.  Kaidan scratched his cheek, fighting back against a yawn that itched its way up his throat.

“Alright.  Six solar days ago, a ship drifted past – good morning, Lieutenant – one of our outposts on the borders of the Traverse.  Telemetry-...”

Kaidan squinted at the three-dimensional map hanging in space on the screen behind her.  “I didn’t think we had any outposts that far out.”

“Officially, we don’t,” Shepard replied.

“Ah,” the lieutenant acknowledged softly, as Shepard continued, “Telemetry suggested an artificial structure, unknown metallic composition, approximately two-point-two kilometers long.

“They didn’t get a very clear look at it,” she said, preempting Kaidan’s next question.  “It did not respond to long-range communications attempts.  A recon team was dispatched five days ago from the _SSV Marathon_.  They reached the ship three days ago.  Three days ago, shortly after the recon team made contact, the unknown ship disappeared.  The recon team did not report back.”

The commander paused.  The screen behind her flickered and refocused into a new display.

“Yesterday, a colony garrison received a transmission.  It was garbled, but Alliance Intelligence managed to clean it up enough to get a signature off of it, and pinpoint its origin.  They now believe the mystery ship is derelict; that it a dozen of our marines are currently located in the Terminus.”

When Shepard paused again, Kaidan ventured to ask, “What do you believe?”

“What I believe is irrelevant,” Shepard replied, considering the floor paneling.

“Today, at 16:41, the _Normandy_ – being as of yet the only Alliance ship with stealth capabilities – was given orders to penetrate the Terminus, to seek out the source of this transmission, ultimately to find this ship, to determine whether it is a threat to Alliance interests, and, if possible, to bring it back to Alliance space to be studied.”

Sweeping her gaze across the room, Shepard sighed.  “Questions?”

“What time is it now?” Kaidan wondered aloud.  Shepard stared at him, expression blank. 

“I haven’t got a clue.”

“It’s currently 19:09,” Pressly said.

“Actually.”  Adams corrected, grinning, “It just turned 19:10.”

“Right,” Shepard murmured, rubbing her eyes.  “Any other questions?”

“Sure.”  Kaidan asked, “What about the _Marathon_ ’s missing crew?”

“The Alliance wants the ship,” Shepard said, with a simple shrug.

“Anything else?” In reply to the silence, Shepard nodded.  “Dismissed.” 

Shepard turned to the star chart as her crew stood.  While Adams and Pressly took their leave, Kaidan came to stand at her shoulder; she moved to accommodate him, eyes still fixed on the screen.

“Do you think this is related to the ship that attacked Eden Prime?”

“Alliance Command does,” the commander replied.

Kaidan pressed his luck.  “But you don’t.”

“I have my doubts,” Shepard said, “But we won’t know for sure until we find it.”

She stepped past him, easing into her chair.  “If you’re feeling motivated, Adams has everything we received from Intel if you want to look it over.”

“I think I will,” Kaidan remarked.  One eyebrow arched, inexplicably reminding him that she hadn’t nailed him for a lack of protocol... yet.  He swiftly excused himself.  “Ma’am.”

~*~

 _Fraternization is against regulations_ , was starting to become a sacred mantra.

Alenko’s harness hit the locker beside her, bound up in his shirt.  The lieutenant crouched down to untie his boots, and Ashley watched from the corner of her eye as he shucked both them and his trousers, giving her a rather impressive view.

She might have called it perfect, had he not noticed her staring.  “Something on your mind, Chief?”

 _Shit_.

“I was just wondering what’s going on.”  Ashley shrugged, fastening her chestplate in place.  “If I’m allowed to know anything other than _shoot_ or _not shoot_.  That kind of thing.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Alenko’s lips.  He worked to pull his armor case out of his locker, and stuffed his clothes in to replace it.  “Intel picked up the location of a ship they think might be connected to the ship that attacked Eden Prime, but they couldn’t confirm.”

“So they’re sending us out to check?” Ashley asked.  “That’s... surprisingly efficient of them.”

“Well, no,” Alenko clarified as worked to suit himself up.  “They’ve already sent a team, but they lost contact.”

“They’re sending us to check on the guys they already sent to check who haven’t checked back yet,” the gunnery chief remarked.  Fully armored, she leaned against the adjoining table.  “That sounds more like the Alliance I’m familiar with.”

Kaidan chuckled, rousing warm and fuzzy butterflies in her stomach.  She _could_ have looked away at any time.

But she didn’t want to.

 _Fraternization is against regulations_.  Fortunately for her sanity, an objective peek from time to time – for purely scientific reasons, such as tormenting Shepard during downtime – was perfectly harmless.

~*~

The ship appeared to be adrift, resting in the penumbra of the innermost moon of the outermost planet of the system.  An indistinct mass from a distance, it grew in form until its hull was all that could be seen in the view from the cockpit.  It was ovoid – longer than deep; deeper along the south and shallower along the north.  Even at close range, the hull appeared cast of a solid material, dark and gray in the semi-shadow of the moon.

“That’s not the ship from Eden Prime.”

“No,” Shepard agreed.  It was massive, but wholly alien.  A sense of unease settled on her shoulders, and she rolled them back, seeking to dislodge it.  “Intel suggests there’s an airlock... somewhere.”

“Real helpful, Commander,” Moreau replied.  “Thanks.”

The commander did not share in the nervous chuckling that spread across the cabin.  Rather, her eyebrows raised at the sound, furrowing her brow.  She stood statue-still, eyes fixed on the hull of the ship.  “Start from the north facet.”

“Aye, aye.” Twisting in his chair, the pilot looked up at her.  “Are you... gonna stand there the whole time?”

“Yes.”

Easing back into his seat, Moreau groused under his breath, “You’re the commander, Commander.”

“Big of you to notice.”

Alenko stepped into the cockpit behind her.  As he reached for her shoulder, Shepard turned to face him, leaving his hand hanging in midair.  Thumbing over his shoulder, at the partition before the airlock, he requested, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

As they stepped back from the control, Moreau gave an overdramatic sigh of relief, making certain Shepard heard him.

~*~

The airlocks were roughly matched in size, within the margin of a meter and a half.  With the _Normandy_ ’s docking gear fit over the opposing door, the compartment was pressurized.  Shepard and Pressly oversaw the process, while Alenko and Williams stood by – Alenko at Shepard’s shoulder and Williams pacing between the three officers and the engineering team.

Adams’ and his engineers huddled together on the other side of the compartment, working diligently over the interface until the circular airlock hissed, sliding open in four equilateral slices.  There was the slightest rush of air outward as the atmospheres mixed, stabilizing in a indeterminate mixture of both.  The difference in gravity was perceptible, and, when Ensign Lémieux fumbled, his stylus fell into the darkness.  Where the _Normandy_ ’s gravity field pulled down to the deck, lateral to the rest of the ship, the alien ship’s gravity field pulled straight down from the portal, to a flat, dull floor below.

“This has got to be the least efficient airlock design I have ever seen,” Williams remarked.  Shining her light as far as she could reach without getting pulled in, she found no sign of a ladder or a lift.  Shepard stepped past her, first forward, then up, eschewing the _Normandy_ ’s pull for that of the alien ship.

“It could be for loading cargo,” Adams suggested.  “Or equipment.”

Williams moved back as Shepard paced the circumference, holding one arm out to balance against the _Normandy_ ’s airlock floor.  Crouching, the commander examined the other side briefly, before sliding, boots first, the distance to the floor below.

Taking that as a cue, Williams stepped up to follow.  Before she could, Alenko was beside her, wordlessly offering her an arm to hold on to, to close the distance to the floor.  Once she was safely down, the lieutenant dropped down last, and Shepard stepped back into the light.

“Pressly.”  Her executive officer’s head appeared in circle above, and Shepard delineated, “Keep under the radar and maintain radio silence.  If all goes as planned, we will run a silent rendezvous in forty-eight hours.  If we are not here, wait an additional twenty-four hours for my signal.  If you receive no signal, get my ship back to Alliance space.  If this ship jumps to FTL, get the _Normandy_ back to Alliance space.  If this ship explodes, get the _Normandy_ back to Alliance space.  Keep all channels open and be prepared to improvise.  Copy?”

“Aye, Ma’am.”

“Uh, Ma’am?” Shepard turned back to the portal, to find Pressly duly concerned.  “It’s not going to explode is it?”

Under her visor, Shepard’s eyebrows raised in unison.  “I try to keep an open mind.”

“If it cracks open and births a giant space chicken-...” Williams coughed politely into her hand, suddenly finding herself the focus of attention.  “Nothing, never mind.”

Adams closed the hatch above.  Soon after, the pull from the Normandy’s field weakened and vanished altogether.

They were alone.

 

Alenko worked the panel beside the inner airlock door in silence, while Williams covered him.  Like the outer door, the inner door was minimalist – barely there aside from a seam that ran two lines from floor to ceiling.  With a rush of air, it slid open into the wall to reveal a bare, unlit room.

“Gravity is zero-point-eight-nine, so you may feel a little bit bouncy,” the lieutenant reported, reading from his omni-tool.  “Atmosphere is breathable.  A little heavy on the oxygen, but well within tolerable limits for us.  Temperature is chilly, but viable.”

When nothing attacked, Shepard cautiously stepped out into the ship.

The outer room wrapped around the airlock itself to an archway on the other side.  The connecting corridor was shorter and a slight narrower than average Alliance architecture allowed for.  Two humans abreast would have a bare minimum of elbow room.  Had she stood on her toes, Shepard could have brushed the ceiling by the tips of her fingers.  From the antechamber, it ran laterally in two directions, each into pitch darkness.  As their lights skimmed across the walls, a jumble of chaotically ordered color jumped out at them.

“Do you suppose that’s some kind of writing?” Alenko wondered.

“It’s very...” Williams cocked her head, then shrugged.  “Artistic.  Whatever it is.”

Shepard barely gave the symbols a half glance.  From the relative safety of the junction, she stared into the darkness on the right, straining her eyes as far as her light carried, then left, then right again.  Glancing over her shoulder, as though already regretting the choice, she started down the left, trusting both Williams and Alenko to follow.

 

The corridor traveled downward through the ship at a slight incline, with the barest arc towards the interior of the ship.  No side passages appeared, and the few breaks in the colorful mosaic were solid wall.  Roughly half an hour later, the corridor had leveled off, yet continued on.

The distance gave Shepard time to think, but there wasn’t much more she now knew inside of the ship than she had on the outside.  A solid _thwump_ , followed by solid profanity, snapped Shepard free of her reverie, and she turned back to find half her team missing.

“Williams?” Alenko called, light sweeping across the empty corridor.

“Sorry!  I...” Her voice was distant, and carried a note of uncertainty.  They followed the sound to an opening painted into the wall that Shepard had missed, but her gunnery chief had not.  “I’m alright!  I, um... I found a fork in the road.”

Shepard stopped short, grabbing Alenko and pulled him back a step, even as Williams remembered to warn them, “But careful it’s a long way down!”

Before them, there was no floor.  Two heights of the corridor below, Ashley’s faceplate reflected their lights, until her hand obscured them.  The commander paced the edge of the gap twice, considering.

“Stay here,” she told Alenko.

Shepard crouched, lowering to swing her legs out over the ledge.  With nothing but smooth metal for her to hold on to, her weight carried her over the curved edge and into the darkness.  She hit the floor gracelessly, landing on her back.

Crouching as close to the edge as caution warranted, Alenko watched from above.  Shepard’s computer spiked a low warning when she hit the floor, then leveled immediately.  Williams moved to haul her to her feet.  The pair of them conferred, examining the space they were in.  At length, Shepard came to stand directly beneath the ledge and looked up.

“It’s probably best if you stay up there.  It looks like we’ll have to find another way back.”

Alenko blinked.  “Do you really think that’s necessary?”

“What?”

“I _can_ lift you back up,” he pointed out.  “If you want.”

Shepard considered this silently, scuffing the toe of her boot on the floor below.  “You may as well come down, then.”

She stepped back to give him space.  Concentrating on the distance below, Alenko stepped into the air.  The field caught him halfway to the floor.  Softening his fall, it landed him heavy but on his feet before it dissipated softly into the air.

Williams turned away, biting her lip, flashing her light in a sudden, inexplicable survey of the surrounding corridors.  Shepard merely stared at him.

~*~

The junction that Williams had unwittingly stumbled upon traveled in several directions.  From there, they found another junction, and from there a room, dimly illuminated by the colors on the wall, which here glowed and mixed together into a pale, serviceable light.  Past the door, the temperature dropped, and the far wall was filled with countless small lockers, each the width of Alenko’s hand, from his thumb to small finger.  He slid one out, to sate curiosity, and a gathered a handful of its contents to examine.

“What...?” Williams let the question hang, poking at the pods resting upon Alenko’s palm.

“Plant seeds,” Shepard remarked, before turning back to the corridor.

“Guess so,” Williams agreed, as Alenko replaced the seeds to their drawer, where hundreds more rested.

 

Branching off from the same dark corridor were numerous storage banks, mostly identical to the first, save the unique composition of the colors mixed upon on the walls.  Two larger rooms were not, with large, stacked pods protruding from the walls themselves, pulsing with pale blue light.

In the third such room they came across, a few of the pods had burst open and their contents pooled upon the floor.  A sickly-sweet stench hung over a corpse, draped over the shards of its container.  Long and lithe and sloth-like in build, the creature had a long neck to compliment its long arms.  Scales and tiny, whisker-like hairs glistened along its skin under the shifting blue light.  Two inch claws protruded from its second thumb and final finger and likewise on its toes, with the rest of its digits smaller in comparison.

It was difficult to tell whether it had died from its pod having ruptured, or from the bloody black gashes and blistering burns along its body, or if both were resultant of the same accident.

 

As they moved through the ship, there were more pods, of varying sizes.  More storage compartments, of lockers and oddly fashioned, unyielding crates both.  Connected by long stretches of corridor and junctions, in no perceivable pattern.

There was no sign of an indigenous crew, nor of the _Marathon_ ’s missing marines.

~*~

The path descended sharply, bright in the distance.  It leveled, opening into a vast, cavernous chamber, full of lush, verdant growth.

Unlike the darkened corridors and the dimly lit storage rooms, the botanical chamber was fully lit with bright, pure light.  Most of the plants were of a green or teal hue, although the ground was carpeted with a red, grass-like moss analogue.  Hundreds of species budded and flowered in a kaleidoscope of color.  Fruit-like growths dangled from low vines and dotted clumped from stalks along the ground.  There were several paths, low to the earth, cutting through the grasses and trees to lead further in.

The ground was packed earth from the wall inward.  The plants appeared untended, and long since overgrown.  The vaulted ceiling above was simply light.

Shepard clipped her helmet as soon as corridor opened.  Unbidden, both Alenko and Williams followed suit.  The temperature had risen perceptively as they passed the threshold of the chamber, in the same way as it had dropped the cooler storage rooms above.

At first, Shepard set their path around the outer perimeter, but when the plant life grew thick against the wall, she changed course, and delved a straight path towards the center.

 

Passing a particularly thriving bush, Ashley snapped a thick-stemmed flower from among its brethren and examined it as she walked.  The petals were a deep red, a black velvet towards the center and pink at the very edge.  She pressed the curiously dry, pulpy end of the stem to her chin.  When it didn’t burn, cause her to break out in a rash, or otherwise harm her, she twirled it in her fingers, and fell back in line behind Alenko.

 

A small circle of earth, almost a hundred meters in, had once been groomed and cultivated, set apart by a string of small stones along the ground that formed a barrier from the rest of the garden, beyond which was a carpet of red moss and tiny black flowers sprouting from pale white stems.

Several larger rocks, wide and squat to the ground, were placed in an broken semicircle.  Here, the commander paused, running her fingers through her damp hair as she studied the blue-greenery overhead.

“Take half an hour,” she said, abruptly breaking the silence.  She continued onward, across the glade.  “Unless the situation warrants otherwise, stay here.”

“Where are you going?” Alenko asked.

“Nowhere,” Shepard replied over her shoulder.  “Poking around.  Holler if you need me.”

She disappeared into the foliage, rustling off into the distance.  Alenko watched her go, before sinking down onto one of the rocks.  He dug out a rations packet and peeled it open, offering the perfect opportunity for Ashley to stick her flower behind his ear, anchoring the stem in his hair.  He glanced up towards it as best he could, mystified but unruffled, and ultimately opted to ignore it.

Ashley sighed.  Flopping down onto her own rock opposite the lieutenant, she laced her fingers together against her knees.  “This place is weird.”

“Yeah, in a way,” Alenko agreed.  “You have to admit, though, it is interesting.”

“If by ‘interesting,’ you mean ‘completely out of whack.’”  At his deferential shrug, Ashley sighed.  “Come on, who builds like this?  It’s so disorganized – I mean, the whole place is like an anthill.  It’s got all these... storage bins full of seeds and creatures in vats.  It’s got a big-ass arboretum,” she glanced over her shoulder at the plants around them in emphasis.  “There’s no sign of a VI.  No locked doors.  No doors, _period_.  There are no bunks, no crew, nobody around at all except us.  It’s _creepy_.”

“Maybe we just haven’t found them yet.  It’s a big ship.”

“Maybe.”

 

They waited in companionable silence.  In the still warmth of the sterile garden, bereft of breeze or birdsong or rummaging critters, Ashley could almost hear the seconds ticking down.

“So.”  She leaned back, cocking her head.  “Tell me about yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because you never talk to anyone.”  She leaned forward again, scrutinizing him with an air of objectivity.  “And I’m,” she bit down on the word _curious_ , “you know, bored.”

“What do you want to know?”

“ _Any_ thing.”  At his blank stare, she recanted, “Oh, Fine, fine...” Unwilling to miss the opportunity, she glanced around for inspiration.  Her eyes landed on the foil packet in his hands, and she flicked her gaze back to his face.  “Why’d you join up?”

“Why’d I join up?”  With a shrug, he recited, “The usual reasons – adventure, fame, fortu-”

“ _Bullshit_.”

To her surprise, he chuckled.

“Okay, um…” His smile faded, and his gaze dropped to the grass between them.  “Because an Alliance soldier once saved my life.”

“Really?”

“For the most part, yeah.”  He met her stare with a fleeting, wan smile.  “She taught me that there was more to life than... sitting around and waiting for it to happen.”

“Oooh.” Ashley fought, then lost to a grin.  “Is that all she taught you?”

“No.”  The lieutenant cleared his throat.  “She also taught me that not everyone in the Alliance were self-absorbed jackasses.”  His eyes narrowed, and the corner of his mouth twitched.  “Mostly just the brass.”

Ashley sat in stunned silence, and her mouth recovered before her mind.  “Sir, that was-...”

There was a rustling in the foliage behind her.  Alenko didn’t seem to notice; if he did, it didn’t bother him.  The sound grew closer, and she twisted around to see Shepard emerge from the undergrowth.  The commander stopped cold, staring at the flower in Alenko’s hair without blinking.  At length, she accepted the situation with a lyrical _huh_ , before sitting down and pulling forth one of her own ration packs.

~*~

The corridor picked up on the other side of the chamber, directly across from where it had fed in.  Running lateral through another junction, it opened into a chamber smaller than the garden by far, yet similar in structure.  The edges of the room sloped downward to the floor, walls rising into a vaulted, well-lit ceiling.  The platform they were on circled the room from the wall inward, with a single, massive computer bank occupying the far side of a shallow pit.  Bits and pieces of what appeared to be decorative furniture or equipment had been thrown haphazardly against the near edge of the pit in the center of the room, and an acrid odor hung in the air.

“This looks promising,” Alenko said.

Nothing attacked when Shepard stepped out into the light.  Another of the sloth-like corpses rested upon the floor, near to the corridor; she nudged it with the toe of her boot, contemplative.  Nodding to the console, she said, “See what you can do with it.”

Several adjacent passageways branched off from the one that they had followed in.  The room was wide open – the heart, it seemed – yet with no security measures to speak of.

“ _Oh_.”

The sound jerked her around.  Alenko had stumbled at the edge of the pit, arms wide in surprise, one boot hovering in space.  Shepard came to stand beside him, Williams trailing behind, and her lips curled back from her teeth.

Human bodies lined the pit.  A few had been pulled aside, others had likely fallen where they stood, with no one to tend to them.  _Thirteen_.  Twelve and a commanding officer – the _Marathon_ ’s expedition compliment.  Their armor had been rent apart and badly seared.

Alenko retracted his foot, gingerly.  Stepping down past him, the commander knelt beside the nearest body.  The soldier’s helmet had melted, taking half her face along with it.

“Careful,” Alenko warned.  “They might be caustic.”

“Get that thing online,” Shepard told him.  He lingered for a moment longer before following the directive, picking his way carefully through the mess.  She pulled the dead woman’s tag, studying the name engraved on it for a moment, before moving to the next one.

Williams paced the lip of the pit, burgeoning uneasiness prompting her to shrug open her assault rifle.  She crouched at the edge, indecisive, watching Shepard go about her task.

It wasn’t much of a surprise.

At one tag, Shepard paused, crouching back down beside the man it belonged to.  She rolled him onto his back and unsealed his helmet. 

“Commander?”  At her query, Shepard startled and looked up.  Ashley’s sense of uneasiness grew stronger.  “You okay?”

“It’s nothing,” the commander remarked.  She glanced up at Alenko, who had turned from his task, then at the tag in her hand.  “I, uh... knew him.”

“Well... Damn.” Before she could hold her tongue, Ashley rambled, “Wait, you mean, like... ‘know him’ know him or...”  Almost immediately, she caught herself.  “Shit, I’m sorry.”

Shepard shrugged.  “He was very good at his job.”

Williams fidgeted, then stood, moving to cover the entrance, which was suddenly _too_ dark for her comfort.  When she peeked over her shoulder, she found that Shepard was moving a mere slight faster, for she was no longer reading the tags that she pulled.  Alenko met her gaze, although she couldn’t read his expression.

Chewing her lip, Williams snapped her attention back to the darkened corridors.

 

Her self-appointed watch didn’t last long.  Shepard appeared behind her, jolting her out of her imagination.

“I want you to check each of these corridors,” Shepard said.  “Sequentially.  You see anything – and I mean _anything_ –  suspicious, report back.  Do not take chances, do not play hero.  Understand?”

“Skipper, this whole _place_ is suspicious.”

Shepard’s eyes narrowed.  “Do you understand?”

“Loud and clear,” Williams squeaked.

Shepard watched as the gunnery chief disappeared into the nearest of the corridors.  Watching the dark a moment longer than perhaps necessary, she eventually turned, dropping into the pit and picking her way to Alenko’s side.

The lieutenant diverted his attention from Adams’ module.  At first, he said nothing, then thought better of it.

“You alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be.”  Shepard’s statement was flat, and left no room to argue.  Rubbing her thumb along her palm and studying the crease of her glove, she asked, “Is this thing working at all?”

“Yeah,” Alenko said.  “Um.”  After clearing his throat, he reported, “The cipher is pulling down all the data it can and running an analysis for common points of reference.”

At Shepard’s blank stare, he simplified, “This computer and our computer are learning how to communicate.  Right now it’s mostly a matter of waiting for them to hash it out.”

At her continued stare, he shifted his weight and appended, “It’s not dangerous, if that’s what you’re worried about.  Shouldn’t be.”

“No,” Shepard replied.  “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

For a moment longer, she stared – until the computer beeped, and Alenko, setting his helmet to one side, turned his attention back to it.  The makeshift barricade had been thrown together against the darkness, so it was the darkness she watched.

~*~

She blinked, and there was a flicker in the shadow.  Suddenly awake, and very much aware, Shepard raised her fingers to her ear, activating her implant.  So as not to disturb the man working calmly beside her, she spoke under her breath.  “Williams, what’s your position?”

_“Checking out another one of those storage bays.  Fun stuff.  Why, wha-”_

Keeping her eye on the far corridor, Shepard primed her omni-tool.  The darkness flickered again, and the sound of Williams’ voice mingled with the blood rushing through her ears, the thunder of an echoing report, and the medley of two armored bodies hitting the floor.  Dull pain spiked from her shoulder inward, numbed by adrenaline.

Her shields didn’t react at all.

Alenko choked on air beneath her.  He blinked, eyes widening, as Shepard shoved herself off him to intercept the turian charging towards them.  The turian’s momentum nearly threw the commander off her feet, and she dragged the stranger half the distance down with her.

The unmarked turian was young and inexperienced.  At first, Shepard easily held the advantage, locking one arm upward and catching her fingers beneath a sensitive faceplate.  Pain glanced off her ribs; her sudden pivot ripped the knife from her opponent’s hand, but a blow to her jaw knocked her to the floor.  The turian rose above her, plates clicking, only to stagger from an impact; Williams held tightly upon her back, struggling both to keep her hold and to find an advantage.

Shepard pulled the knife free, lunging to her feet.  As Williams was hurled free, Shepard ducked beneath the turian’s guard.  Jamming the knife upward into its owner’s throat, she twisted the blade.  They hit the floor together; for a long instant, a rough hand clamped around her neck, and loosened again as Shepard kicked twice, disengaging.

She rolled away, blind.  Alenko hauled her upright; before she could pull away, gunfire forced them down, behind the barricade.  Shepard dashed blue blood from her eyes, leaving a purple smear, and fixed Williams with a stern stare.

“Get us out of here.”

“Wait-” Alenko interrupted, but Williams was already moving.  Shepard urged him after her.

“This way,” Williams snapped.  “Right – far right.”

When he reached the corridor, Alenko abruptly turned back, only for Shepard to half-shove, half-drag him forward again.  They scrambled into the dark, blind save for Williams’ earlier reconnaissance, and ran until no sounds but their own scrambling footfalls echoed through the air surrounding them.

~*~

An off turn landed them at a dead end.  Within the seed storage bank, they paused to regroup.  Williams moved, unbidden, to watch the corridor.  Shepard’s computer spiked in warning.

“Commander, you might want to check you-” Kaidan turned, and the words caught in his throat.  “Shepard?”

Leaning heavily on the corridor wall, Shepard had clamped one hand over her side, shoulders shivering as she breathed.  Williams wandered back to her side, but Shepard shook her head, waving the woman off.  “Need to catch my breath is all.”

She cleared her throat, standing straight, away from the wall.  She took one step further, and faltered.  The momentum carried her forward.  She threw out an arm to catch herself at the same time that Kaidan lunged to catch her.

Ashley beat them both to it, and carefully lowered the commander to her knees.

“Dizzy.”

“No kidding,” Williams snickered.  Even so, she shared a nervous glance with Kaidan, who knelt beside them.

“I mean, ‘just dizzy,’” Shepard snarled, quite ineffectively.  She glowered at Kaidan as he laid his hand over hers, and he glared straight back.  Her stared dulled, and refocused, bored, somewhere over his shoulder.

Kaidan didn’t even pretend to know what she was thinking.

He peeled her fingers away, and his stomach dropped at the slick stickiness that dripped from them.  Her armor had deployed medi-gel to seal the damage her shoulder, but not the bloody gash in her side, where the fabric was torn and shredded.  For a moment, he puzzled over disparity, before finding that the microtubules in the fabric had clogged with blood-bonded medi-gel, leaving Shepard to bleed freely.

With one hand pressed tight against the wound, under Shepard’s own, Kaidan searched blindly for a medi-gel packet from his kit.  Shepard pulled a scowl, nearly a pout, that he might have found hilarious, had the situation not been deathly serious.  Carefully working the packet open with his teeth, he expertly applied its contents to the open wound before reaching for a second.  Some of it sloughed off, bonding to fluid tissue instead of flesh, but before long the bleeding had stopped, and he applied a third, just because it couldn’t hurt.  When he was finished, her armor was splattered with bonded medi-gel and drying blood.

It was a mess, but she would live.

Providing they could get her back to the Normandy alive.

Alenko glanced to Williams, who nodded him over towards the far corner.  He hesitated, then rose to join her.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked, voice low.  Alenko’s frown deepened, and she determined, “You don’t have a plan.”

“I’m working on it.”

“May I make a suggestion?” Catching herself under his gaze, Williams appended a decisive, “Sir?”

“Always.”

Taken aback, the gunnery chief sighed deeply, before delving into the situation.  “We can’t go dragging her around the ship like that.  Not without getting all of us killed.”

She paused, for him to agree or disagree.  Instead, he glanced at Shepard; at length, his voice cracked.  “What are you suggesting?”

“I can go on ahead, try to find the fastest way back to the airlock, see if the way is clear, maybe even see what we’re up against.  If I’m lucky.  And... if it doesn’t see me first.”

“Yeah.” Alenko’s agreement was measured, expression hardening as he quickly thought it through.  “That might be our best shot.  _Wait_ ,” his command stopped her in her tracks.  “You’re not going alone.”

“But-” She began to argue, but Alenko pushed past her, back to Shepard’s side.  Outstretched hands curled into fists at her side, whereafter Williams shook her head and followed.

 

Shepard stirred, hunching as they returned.  Kaidan lifted her as carefully as he could, to minimal protest, with Williams shadowing their movement.  The curve of the room offered a wall between her and the open corridor.

If nothing else, she would be out of sight.

Before he could set her down again, Shepard let go of his shoulder, sliding off his arm to hit the floor a touch harder than he would have liked.  Kaidan sighed, nudging her legs away from the corner of the wall, while she stared into space.  Hand hovering above her uninjured shoulder, he hesitated, then thought better of it and pulled away.

“Sit tight,” he said.  “We’ll be back soon, I promise.”

Shepard’s voice rumbled deep in her throat, barely scraping past her lips.  “Don’t make promises you can’t afford.”

Hooking his thumb under her chin, Kaidan gently lifted her gaze to meet his own.  There was a flicker of uncertainty in her sulking defiance.  “I’m not.”

Williams hesitated, half a beat longer than necessary, before turning to follow him out.

~*~

The corridor they followed sloped upward, branching a handful of times, both continuing up or sloping down, or splitting into two or three directions.  Twice they had to double back from sheer drops into other corridors.  With no indication of which way was back and which way was forward, constantly vigilant for a hostile contact around every corner, their progress slowed to a crawl.

At the end of the tunnel, the floor opened to dim light.  They found themselves above a junction, below which a troupe of well-armed, heavily armored turians loitered clustered in groups of twos, threes, and fours.  They had set up a light camp under their own lights, with two teams guarding eight passages.  One turian in particular stood out, both in the color of his armor and the manner of his swagger.  As they watched, a pair of turians reported to him, deferential.  Snippets of conversation drifted up, which, for the most part, their translators ignored or spit out as an incomprehensible garble.

Ashley glanced up as Alenko abruptly pulled back from the lip of the ledge.  Consulting his omni-tool, he rapidly scanned through its database of star charts.

“What is it?” Ashley asked.

“I think they’re Eameni.”

Williams inched back to the edge, peeking down.  “They look like turians to me.”

“They… well, they are.”  Closing out his omni-tool, Alenko explained, “Kinda.  They’re separated by a couple thousand years of sociological and physiological evolution.  The Hierarchy ran across them while surveying the Traverse.  They offered them protection and advancement into the galactic community, and advanced technology, in exchange for sovereignty.”

“Basically, to bring them back into the fold.”

“Basically.  The Hierarchy... wasn’t expecting an attack.  The Eameni went on a rampage, and the Hierarchy... well...”

“Got the snot kicked out of them.”

“Something like that.” Alenko scratched at the neck of his armor.  “They don’t like to talk about it.”

The Eameni are slow to expand, and don’t really go beyond their cluster.  They never discovered prothean tech, never developed eezo technology.  Focused everything they had on perfecting warfare.”

“But with gunpowder instead of targeting computers?”

“Mhhm.”  After a thoughtful pause, Alenko’s omni-tool flared to life.  “Hold on.”

Ashley’s shields flickered; her computer threw a warning as they died completely.  Feeling vulnerable, she inched back from the ledge.  They flared again, and her HUD displayed clear.  “You should be able to take a few hits now, but it’ll be a heavy drain, so watch your power levels.”

Alenko’s tuned his own shields, before he joined her at the edge to assess the situation.

“Twenty four.”  He scratched at his cheek, contemplative.  “I don’t like the odds.”

“I’ll take twenty, if you can take three.”

“Not funny.”

“Not joking.”  Ashley sighed, running a pre-fight check on her equipment.  If they went around, they would risk coming right back on top of the turians.  Eameni.  _Whatever_.  “Not really.”

“Could you hit one of those pods if I give you a clear shot?”

“What?”  She followed his indication to a metal device, strung like a gourd, on leader-apparent’s hip.  “I guess-... I mean, yes I could hit it, but-...”

“If I’m right, that’s our best chance.”

Booting up her biochemical suite, Ashley loaded an adrenaline shot.  The lieutenant watched her movements closely, giving no sign of disapproval.  “How many doses do you have?”

“Three.”

“Make ‘em count.”  Sighing deeply, Alenko fixed his gaze on the stage below.  “Ready?”

“Anytime.”

Blue fire rippled outward, resonating with the sudden biotic storm below.  Eyes distant, Alenko spoke an order; so soft a whisper, it was almost inaudible.  “ _Go_.”

~*~

Mismatched footsteps awoke her from a dazed near-sleep.  There was an echo – comfortable, sporadic chatter between two voices – louder, clearer, closer with each passing second.  Almost tonal trills, nowhere near the bare familiarity of Terran Galactic.

A shock of dizziness shot through her as she struggled to sit up, and she bit down on the pained cry that threatened to erupt from her throat.  A ragged gasp wracked her lungs, forcing her focus on simply breathing – _in, out_.

Straining her ears, she listened between breaths.  Her translator couldn’t pick up the words from this distance, if her implant was even coded with the dialect.

Slowly, Shepard leaned forward.  Disengaging her shotgun, she let it slip to the floor, muffled through her fingers.  Reaching over her shoulder, one-handed, she disengaged her assault rifle, catching it in the crook of her elbow before letting it down steadily between her body and the wall.  Her sniper rifle followed, jostling – far too loudly for her peace of mind – against the shotgun as she lowered it to the floor.

Twenty kilograms lighter, she rasped a sigh, listening.

The trills had stopped.  The footfalls had slowed to a cautious _step-before-step_ , each muffled click piercing to her ears.  Unclipping her helmet from her side, Shepard fumbled for the light switch.

She heard the pair in the corridor stealth to the threshold of the archway.  Two turians lunged into the room, young and foolhardy, moving quickly to investigate the sound that clacked against the far wall and the light that flippantly jiggled through the dim air.  While they were distracted, Shepard edged along the wall, silent and out of sight.

In the darkened corridor, she scrambled to her feet, falling heavily against the wall.  Burying the pain that coursed through her protesting muscles as deeply as she could, she shuffled at first, building up the distance and momentum to run, blocking out everything else.

~*~

The biotic-incendiary inferno had taken out a dozen of the turians.  The odds were further evened by Williams’ marksmanship, but the rest had scattered, forcing her into the thick of it.

She took down two more mere moments after she hit the floor.  Alenko shielded their decent, guarding her back better than she might have imagined possible.

But then, for an officer, he wasn’t half bad.

“ _Williams!_ ”

She spun about, in time for a bullet to impact her faceplate and send her reeling.  The fuzz of Alenko’s biotics rippled near her, then dissipated.  Falling back beside him, she recovered her breath with her second hit of adrenaline.

Better than planetside bushwhacking, any day of the week.

~*~

The acerbic scent of death washed over her, out of the light that was suddenly too bright.  Shepard swallowed, nauseous and disoriented, as her eyes focused on the almost familiar commander center.  The computer at the far end of the pit had blossomed into a full, vibrant holographic display across the room, dwarfing a smaller, blue Alliance holo at its center.

She was alone, injured, weak, but not helpless.

As she stumbled towards the center of the room, one knee buckled under her, and she hit the floor hard, coming eye-to-eye with a corporal’s limp, lifeless gaze.

 _Not helpless_.

And not, she realized, alone.

Slipping headlong into the pit, Shepard twisted, worming her way between the bodies and coming to rest beside Howland’s shoulder.

“It’s funny, you know,” she murmured.  Pulling up her omni-tool, she keyed a series of commands into the display.  Her implant chirped.  The near imperceptible buzz of her combat computer faded to nothing.  The omni-tool darkened along with her eyes.  “After everything that’s happened... and you never did find a way to thank me.”

Nesting her head upon her arm, Shepard fought to center herself, breathing slow, shallow breaths.  She heard footfalls; cautious at first, then harried at the sight before them.  She heard chatter; frustrated, angry chatter as they discovered the body of their companion.

In the long run, none of this would matter.

Shadow fell upon her, and she held still.

~*~

“‘Too bad’?  Sir, they attacked _us_ first, in case you somehow missed that part,” she waved an arm, encapsulating the situation.  “Hell, according to you, they attacked the _turians_ first.  Even _if_ the turians...”

The lieutenant held up a hand, silencing her.

“I didn’t say it was unnecessary,” he clarified, but offered no further explanation.  Williams huffed, tapping her faceplate as her display flickered.

“Twelve in the blast, six for you, four for me.  We’re still missing...”

“Shit.”

“What?”  Alenko tripped over his line of thought at her flat interruption.  Williams pulled her helmet, turning it to study the spiderlines etched into its polymer.  “What is it?”

Williams spoke softly, but enunciated each word.  “Shepard’s computer just went offline.”

~*~

They traveled back the way they had come, to no resistance.  Along the way, Ashley took the chance of clipping her helmet, cracked as it was.  She still tingled from the biotic field Alenko had employed to get her into the upper corridor, prompting her to sporadically rub at her face or the back of her neck to dispel the feeling.

Hell of a ride, though she could have done _without_ the smacking into the ceiling bit.

At the turn marked by red blood, smudged upon the wall where Shepard had fallen, she hesitated, suddenly thankful for the brief distance between them set by Alenko’s long gait and fast pace.  She had a good idea of what they would find, but the ice that threatened to settled in her gut wasn’t quite _real_ yet, and a few more precious seconds wouldn’t break her, unlike the truth.

But as she turned the corner, Ashley found the lieutenant at a loss, sweeping his gaze about the room.  Curiosity overtook dread, and she dared to venture forward.

Shepard was gone.

Ashley stared at the three weapons piled haphazardly on the floor.  She turned her head to find Alenko crouched in the far corner, as he recovered a likewise discarded helmet.  “Well, this is definitely not standing operating procedure.”

“No,” he absently agreed, studying the helmet’s faceplate as he stood.  He flicked the light off and on, then off again, before setting it down with the weapons.

“So... now what?”

“I have to find her.”

“Okay, I am obligated to point out that this is a very big ship and she could be _anywhere_.”  Staving off his impending rebuttal, Williams raised a finger in defiance, “But you are the boss, and anyway, she can’t have gone far.  Where do you want to start looking?”

“ _I_ have to find her,” Alenko repeated.  “You-... I want you to get back to the airlock.  Contact the _Normandy_ , get out of here.”

At first, she couldn’t answer.  All the right words stuck in her throat, and all that she managed was, “How stupidly heroic of you.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Ashely pivoted on her heel, crossing her arms, and Alenko sighed behind her.  “And I’m not risking both of us on my stupidity, so _please_ – get back to the ship; tell them what happened.”

Easing about, Ashley spared a peek at the lieutenant.  Beneath weariness, he looked determined.  _Stupidly_ determined.

 _Fine, whatever._   _See if I care._

She dug her fingers into his shoulder, using it as an anchor to haul herself up on.  Contrary to her intentions, his head swung about towards her, and her lips met his mouth instead of his cheek.  And for an instant, seeing as how the Alliance was certainly not going to pass up the opportunity to flay her alive for losing two of its more distinguished officers anyway, she figured why the hell not. 

Probably a bad idea on retrospect.  Less on account of what the Alliance thought – this entire mission was a bad idea, and their damned fault – and more because of the klaxon blaring _awkward_ moment of silence that followed.

He stared, eyes utterly blank.

She stared, fighting the urge to look away.  Or look down.  Or look anywhere else.

“Um.”  Ashley cleared her throat, catching herself as her gaze dipped, making her aware of the stupid-cute pout that graced his lips.  She released his shoulder, patting it cordially.  “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” he rasped.

“Yeah, well,” Clearing her throat, Williams plucked at her helmet strap.  “You’re gonna need it.  So get going and bring her back, okay?”

His hand landed on her shoulder, giving the slightest jolt that she could feel it under her armor.  Only when he was gone did she lift her head, but she watched until his light vanished around a curve.

([art by MaxwellDemon](http://maxxiedemon.tumblr.com/post/34222747830/art-based-on-and-created-for-unc-baldrs-tear-by))

~*~

The thin boottrail of blood had disappeared, leaving him with only a direction to follow.  The corridor opened into a kaleidoscopic mosaic, but the command center seemed otherwise unchanged from their undignified clamber to retreat.

Then he noticed a second discrepancy.

The turian that had attacked them slumped where she had fallen.  A second had died beside her, marred by excessive explosive force.

Alenko crept forward for a better view.  The console caught his eye, with Adams’ module blinking at its center.  As he approached the pit, he noticed the third dead turian, which stood out, stark, among the fallen Alliance marines.

And there, a flash of red.

Scrambling to Shepard’s side, Alenko extricated her from beneath the turian, laying her across his lap.  His omni-tool flickered to life.  As he waited for Shepard’s computer to boot, he dipped his head to listen to for her shallow breathing.

Shouldering slumping, Kaidan scoffed.

She may have looked like death warmed over, but she was alive.

Kaidan pulled her out of the pit and arranged her carefully on the floor above.

“Back in a minute,” he promised.

Not that she could hear him.

 

Alenko crossed the pit to the console and sighed, studying the display.  After a cursory scan, he shut down the module and packed it away.  From his omni-tool, he pulled free strings of data, eventually coming to the ship’s schematics.

A shout interrupted his elation; his translator spat out single garbled syllable.  Turning slowly, he placed his palms flat against his thighs, and faced the leader of the Eameni.  The turian’s faceplates flattened; he spoke a string of words, few of which Kaidan separated from the rest, none of which made any intelligible sense.

“I don’t understand,” he replied softly, eyeing the man’s unfamiliar firearm.

A second turian flanked the leader.  Younger, antsy, he barked a sentence, one word of which, Kaidan’s translator picked up as _outsider_.  The leader grunted, in reply, swinging his head sideways to hush his charge.  The youngster’s fidgeting was all the distraction Kaidan needed.  He closed his eyes, feeling out the distance.

And _shoved_.

Both turians flew backward, and Kaidan sped across the pit, barrier flaring to life.  Not taking the chance to breathe, he pulled his sidearm free and lifted the leader from where he had fallen.  Once that threat had been taken care of, he swung his pistol to bear on the second turian, but a shotgun blast interrupted any such necessity.

The younger turian dropped, lifeless.  Williams sauntered forward to haul him up, to his feet and out of the pit, cocky smirk indomitable as he scowled down at her.

“I thought I told you to get back to the _Normandy_.”

“You did.”  Before he could reply, her smirk grew into a cheeky grin.  “But then you were gone, and I had no one to take orders from but myself, so here we are.”

Alenko began to answer; thinking better of it, he shook his head.  Quickly moving to Shepard’s side, he hefted the commander off the floor.  As he strode towards her, Williams stared, in awe of how effortless he made it seem.  “You want a hand with the...?”

“I’ve got her.  Let’s go.”  He swallowed a sudden wave of nausea, and appended, “Fast.”

As he strode past her, into the near corridor.  Williams faltered behind him.

“Hey, where are you going?” she asked, pointing out, “It’s this way, remember?”

“This way is faster,” Alenko said.  In response to her expression of disbelief, he added, “I found a map.”

“Oh.” With a shrug, she darted forward.  “Why didn’t you say so?”

~*~

The ship schematics led them upward, along abrupt turns and switchbacks that forged an otherwise unreadable path.  For Shepard’s sake, they went out of their way to avoid sheer climbs or drops, save one unavoidable.

This time, Ashley didn’t hit the ceiling.  Instead, she landed quite gracefully before grabbing Shepard out of thin air and pulling her away from the drop.  The commander’s dead weight hit her as the biotic field failed, and she sagged under the sudden change.

“I never want to do that again,” Ashley remarked, once Alenko joined them.  He knelt where he had landed, catching his breath; he didn’t bother to answer, and her concern spiked.  “Hey, come on – we’re almost there.”

 

They were almost home free, when Williams grabbed for her sidearm, moving between her officers and the airlock antechamber.  A slender, snakelike head retreated around the corner, away from their lights, and she followed it discreetly.  The slothlike, snakelike creature paused by the airlock, flicking the air with its long tongue.

Ashley shouted, and it ran daintily, following the encircling room, nails clicking on the floor.  She chased it past the airlock door, and held her ground until Alenko called her back.  The creature slithered back, watching them until the door slid shut.

“ _Normandy_ , we’ve reached the rendezvous point.  Are you in position?”

 _“Yes, sir.”_   Corporal Misra replied.  _“Standby.”_

 

The portal above them cracked open.  Light trickled down, growing brighter as the sections separated completely.

“Go,” Alenko told Williams.  She wasted no time in climbing up, assisted by Alenko’s biotics and Misra’s strong grip.  Hitting the airlock floor headfirst, she scrambled around to catch Shepard and cushion her fall.  Vollan replaced her as she bustled them both towards the inner airlock, working with Misra to haul Alenko in.

Adams and Lémieux moved to seal the airlock, before loosening the docking gear and cutting it free.

As the airlock pressurized, Williams stared at Alenko.  The flower still bloomed from the back of his head; fallen from his ear, its stem had lodged in the neck of his armor.  Mesmerized, she reached up to pull it free.  Alenko glanced down, silently questioning.

“It’s an ark ship.”

Before he could answer, the inner airlock slid open.

~*~

Soreness and exhaustion made him lethargic, no matter how awake he felt underneath it all.  It had taken forever to get everything settled to the point where he could finally get back to his locker and out of his armor.  It was taking him an additional measure of forever to lace up his boots.

“Hey.”  Kaidan blinked, suddenly staring up the seam of a well-worn trouser leg.  She was supposed to be off duty; his brain caught up to suggest that maybe she _was_ off duty, and that their location in proximity to her workstation was no correlation.  All the while, while his mind meandered, Williams held out a thermal mug, smiling wryly.  “You look like you could use this.”

Kaidan hurriedly finished tying his bootlace into proper knot before taking the cup.  He didn’t ask what it was, but it was warm and clear and smelled strongly of spice.  “Thanks.” 

As Kaidan stood up, Williams leaned back, gripping the table behind her; she held up well under pressure, but there was a slackness to her posture, a tension in her expression that betrayed weariness.  It jolted him into remembering that they needed to talk.

As her name formed on his tongue, Williams asked outright, “Is she gonna be okay?”

It took him a moment to parse the question over what he had been about to say.  “There’s no reason she shouldn’t be.”

“Are you?”

Taken aback, he found himself staring.  Cocking her head, studying his reaction, she didn’t seem to mind, so he allowed himself to simply look at her.

For once.

For far longer than necessary.

“I, uh... have a meeting with Pressly,” he said, casting about for anything else to look at.  “I’ll-...”  His gaze settled on the unassuming metallic mug in his hands.  “We can talk.  Later.”

 _Had_ to talk later.  ...hadn’t they?  He had barely taken one step toward the elevator before her voice stopped him.

“Alenko?”  Kaidan turned back to find her holding something out to him.  “Could you make sure she gets these back next time you see her?”

If her hand lingered a mere second longer than necessary, if her thumb brushed against his by design, there was no equivalent of tenderness in her expression.  Chalking it up to his imagination, Kaidan flipped the pack of cards over in his hand, at a loss.  “...sure.”

~*~

By the time he had finished his rounds – his duties doubled upon, with Shepard out of commission – it was well past midnight, Arcturus standard, and he had missed his chance to talk to Ashley before she snagged a sleeper pod.  Wide awake, Kaidan sat alone in the crew quarters – the deck of cards heavy in his hands, the ghost of Alliance Issue lip balm searing his tongue – lost in thought as the _Normandy_ lived and breathed around him.

It was zero-three-hundred before he made up his mind.  After a brief sojourn to the mess, he marched a straight line to the medical bay.

 

Other than the commander herself, the room was empty.  On the farthest medical cot from the door, Shepard rested flat on her back, with one arm draped over her ribs.  No longer that sickly ashen gray, her skin had regained some of its former healthy luster.  As he approached, her hand curled into a fist at her side; he realized that her eyes were open, and she was studying the ceiling.

“Hey.”  Other than a half blink, as though she’d thought better of it, Shepard didn’t react.  Kaidan steeled himself – she was hardly on duty, and, duty notwithstanding, if she hadn’t yet reprimanded him for a lack of etiquette, he doubted she was going to arbitrarily start now.  “How’re you feeling?”

Shepard sucked in a breath, and her voice crackled, dry over parched lips, “Like I’ve been stabbed.”

“Yeah.” Briefly, jumbled, his mind replayed those moments – being slammed into to the deck, watching Shepard collapse; the brawl, the blood loss.  He was no stranger to combat, nor close calls, nor death and dying, but his hands itched at the memories all the same.  “That was... quite the hit you took.”

Turning her head ever slightly, she watched him from the corner of one eye.  He met her gaze square, and, when he didn’t move, she rasped, “Do you need something?”

“Me?  No, I, Um...” Swallowing past the lump in his throat, he lifted his offering where she could see it.  Twisting toward him, Shepard propped herself up on one elbow, eyeing the foil packet as it shimmered under the light.  “I thought you might be hungry, so I brought you dinner.”

Knitting her eyebrows together, the commander pushed herself higher, lips pulling back in a determined grimace as she did so.  On reflex, Kaidan reached forward to aid her, supporting her effort to sit upright.  For an instant, she tensed, narrow-eyed, regarding him with...

... _what_?

For a mere instant, then it was gone.   Shepard glanced down, at the packet he pressed into her palm.  Kaidan pulled his hand away, not-quite-stumbling backward a step.

“Thanks,” she whispered. Although focused on the label, her eyes had clouded over. 

Kaidan hit the ledge of the cot behind him.  Blindly grabbing hold of it, he hauled himself up, letting his heels dangle in space.  Tearing the rations packet open, Shepard broke off a corner of the condensed bar within, taking a rather languid bite. 

“Actually, I did want to clear something up.” Kaidan swallowed again, then added.  “If possible.”

“I’m listening,” Shepard stated around a mouthful of food.

“Off the record?”  The commander shrugged.  Dropping his gaze to study his hands, Kaidan rubbed his thumb along his knuckles.  “You don’t seem like the type of person that would go out of her way to save a biotic.”

“So?”

“So I’m _confused_.”  He pressed a thumb between his eyebrows, then pulled it away as quickly, gesturing at nothing.  “This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

While Shepard chewed quietly, seemingly and inexplicably oblivious to his presence, Kaidan resisted the urge to lift the heavy silence with meaningless sound.  At length, she asked, “Is it important to you that I make sense?”

Kaidan scoffed.  “Only for the sake of my sanity, ma’am.”

There was a twitch at the corner of Shepard’s eyes, before her brow furrowed.  She was quiet again, almost contemplative.  When she sighed, it was decisive, and when at last she finally spoke, her voice was softly above a whisper.

“The regulations are clear.”

Kaidan’s heart skipped.

“What?”

Unbidden, his mind had leapt to the memory of soft lips and warm breath.  As if Shepard believed that the prior topic had finished and that, furthermore, now was a fitting time discuss conduct unbecoming.

Except the only way she would have known was if Williams had spoken to her about it, and, just as suddenly as the thought came, it seemed unlikely.

A second thought sprouted, twining about the first.  Twice, now, Shepard had stood between himself and danger.  He wasn’t blind.  Whatever visions or dreams the Prothean beacon had imparted weighed on her shoulders and shadowed her footsteps; the asari on Feros couldn’t have helped matters.  Now, she would no doubt be stepping gingerly and favoring that shoulder until she healed.

And from that thought, realization dawned.  If she was keeping her distance because-....

“The regulations are clear?”  Shepard’s eyes flicked from the foil in her hands to his face.  One eyebrow arched inquisitively, and she clarified, “...on who’s worth saving.  And who’s not.”

 _Oh_.

That was... probably for the better.  Shaking his head, as though that would clear it of static, Kaidan struggled to regain his line of thought, picking his words carefully.

“I don’t think anyone would have questioned your judgment, Commander.”

The commander’s second eyebrow raised to meet the first.  “That could go both ways.”

“Somehow,” Kaidan said, studying the deck between them, “I doubt that it could.”

The packet in Shepard’s hands crinkled, and she eased down to the floor, crossing the short distance between them with slow, cautious steps.

“Look.”  There was a trace of compassion in her voice that he would never have expected to hear.  Rather than see whether the sentiment reflected in her face, his eyes followed her hand, raised as though to rest upon his shoulder.  “Alenko-...”

Shepard jerked back as the intercom chimed.  She grabbed for the cot, and Kaidan grabbed for _her_ , steadying her before she could fall – unnecessarily, perhaps, but for certainty’s sake.  She hung against his arm, as Joker’s disembodied voice floated down from above, blissfully oblivious.

_“Commander?”_

Directing her attention to the ceiling, Shepard scowled.  Any trace of compassion, real or imagined, was long gone.  “What?”

_“Admiral Hackett wants a status report.”_

Making a deliberate display of righting herself, Shepard pulled away from his steadying arm and smoothed the wrinkles of her shirt.

“Tell him I’m _dead_.”

~*~

Williams studied the woman across the table, none too secretly.  If the silence or the scrutiny bothered Shepard, she made no outward sign of it.

Ashley’s shoulders drooped, and she in turned her cards without comment.  They were back in Alliance space – or would be soon enough.  The ship had vanished, breaking free of the _Normandy_ ’s tenuous control as they made their way to the relay, leaving them with a cache of data, a bloody rose, and thirteen empty caskets.  As much as she wanted to sink back into a daily routine, her mind kept wandering back to questions with no answers.

Shepard – up and about, despite Chakwas’ declarations of her being medically unfit and personal protests – simply didn't seem to give a damn.

The door chimed, interrupting her line of thought.

Shepard called out in answer, and the door slid open.  Twisting in her seat to glance over her shoulder, Ashley blinked as Lieutenant Alenko sauntered in, all but smiling.  Flicking an OSD from hand to hand, he walked straight past the table, to set the device down on Shepard’s desk.

 _Did he get laid?_ Ashley mouthed, wide-eyed, thumbing towards the lieutenant, carrying the inferred undertone of, _If so,_ _why was I not informed?_

Shepard’s eyebrow quirked at the question, and she shrugged, flicking her fingers outward in an acquiescence of ignorance.  She folded the cards in her hand flat together, collecting Ashley’s cards from across the table and the stack between them into a single deck.  She pulled her feet off the table as Kaidan took the seat between them, folding his hands in his lap.

While his attention was elsewhere, Ashley slipped Shepard an underhanded look.  Shepard merely shrugged, staring evenly back, prompting Kaidan to follow her gaze, catching the end of a devious grin which melted into saccharine sweet smile before his eyes.

“What?” he asked, amusement coloring his voice as he glanced between the two women, absolutely mystified.

“Nothing!” Ashley insisted, combing her fingers through a tangle in her hair, “I, uh... I’m glad that you _finally_ decided to join us, is all.”

Kaidan responded to her preening with a slow smile of his own.  Shepard watched the interplay, crooking one eyebrow while she shuffled the deck of cards.  As she began to deal them out into three hands, Ashley lapsed into friendly chatter.  Kaidan listened with rapt attention, and a tension eased from his shoulders.

Shepard set the deck in the middle of the table, straightened it, and pulled the cards in front of her into a cohesive hand, close to her chest.

 

**\---  
**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. :)


End file.
